Mead Lake, This
Published November 2007
Centennial Press
Milwaukee
38 pages
Mead Lake is a small, manmade lake in central Wisconsin that doesn't have much to recommend it. It's shallow, parts are still clogged with dead trees from when it was initially flooded in the 1950's, and in summer the algae turns the water a disconcerting shade of green. Yet, it's always been an important place to me. My grandparents owned a cottage on the lake while I was growing up, and through probably the strongest instance of kismet in my life, it turned out my best friend's family also owned a cottage on the same small lake. So I've grown to know Mead very well throughout my life.
In 2004, several additional friends wanted to begin a writing group, and we decided that Mead was sufficiently far away to allow us to concentrate on writing with minimal distractions from our daily lives. We write in many genres and about a disparate array of topics, but the we continually turn to the lake itself as a source and subject of inspiration.
The poems in Mead Lake, This are maps of the lake, reports of the weather, and arguments with the wind. But ultimately this is a chapbook about love, tracing the relationships between the speaker, "you" (a current lover), and "her" (a former one). The poems explore how love can flourish then burn like poison ivy on the berm of the dam or echo like the afterimage of a shooting star. The official site has a lot more info, including a thorough interview and some sample poems. Two poems from the book are also below.
* * *
mead lake, this afternoon
weathered, desiccated oak leaves are still attached to the branches of the lone tree on shore. the leaves hold to the branches or the branches hold to the leaves, who’s to say? in time, the ice will try to make them water. your laundry is slowly crawling out of the hamper and back to your body just to smell you again.
* * *
feeding ants to minnows
on the pier, we were talking about gulls, how they bob on the lake like vociferous styrofoam cups,
how they mean that summer is ending. you don’t like summer ending, and you don’t like
calling them gulls, they are seagulls, and in fact they are not seagulls at all;
rather each is the chalky headstone of a tree broken on the shores of november. i say the lake
is over a hundred feet deep, so the gulls must lay the latticework of ice. you say i’m making that up.
four days ago, with my friend, i spent an hour in a sandal-deep river feeding ants to minnows
for no particular reason. they were voracious as a black hole, harassing the crayfish,
confident in their universe of stones. back on the pier, gulls squawking, you reconsider. one hundred feet
might be right, you say, then i wonder what it must feel like to drown. i lead you to the edge,
take your hand, submerge your palm gently as baptism. like this, i say, and draw you toward a deep kiss,
sucking air hot as august from your lungs.
* * *
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